


swimming in cassiopeia.

by unnagi



Series: moonlight, rain, you. [2]
Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, the furthest possible thing from canon n u can already tell its amess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 07:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13946973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnagi/pseuds/unnagi
Summary: He had leaned in until he could almost taste Jitsui’s thoughts, a lazy, apathetic grin and a sweet yet off-putting smile faced each other.





	swimming in cassiopeia.

“You’re…”

The man looked up for a moment, like an actor who had forgotten his lines.

“Call me Jitsui,” he finally said.

“Why?”

“ _Jitsu_ as in ‘truth’. _I_ as in ‘well’,” he elaborated but did not answer the question.

“Then I’ll be Hatano. _Ha_ as in a ‘wave’ by the sea, _ta_ as in ‘abundance’, _no_ as in a ‘stray’ cat.” With a condescending grin, Hatano explained his own name in painstaking detail, even though it was common enough that anyone could’ve known its characters.

Jitsui had smiled in response, a soft light in his attentive eyes. His smile was so sweet that it was off-putting. Hatano had instantly thought of a honey-glazed mousetrap.

 _From the record they released two weeks ago…_ the radio host spoke sleepily as he introduced the song with little effort, Casiopea’s ‘Take Me’ buzzed out of the broken speakers just as the clock ticked past midnight.

The year was 1982. He lived in a city filled with runaways. Neon signs and streetlights burned into the warm air, the chaos had felt as real as a fuzzy hallucination underneath the charred sky.

The sprawl had been too bright and loud and unpredictable, but he had noticed it anyway. A purple haze was hovering over the horizon, the star was glowing from a distance. It was unmistakable – on the sky that he had observed every night, a new star had appeared out of the blue, pinned onto the east side of the moon like a miniature puzzle piece.

He thought of confirming this discovery with someone else, _hey, can you see the star on the east side of the moon?_ Something like that. Then they’d say reassuringly, _yes, I see it too, it’s not just you_. But he realised there was no one to call at a time like this. Running in a perpetual state of flux, the world had turned into a viscous pulp of unlikely occurrences. He couldn’t help but feel as though he had fell into a raging whirlpool…

“Is it true that your mind tempers with the reality before your eyes, during times of solitude?” Jitsui’s voice crawled into his ears like worms.

The room was dimly lit. Smoking by the window, the sound of a light downpour could be heard, moisture had soaked into the heavy space between them. Breathing in the stiff air, he felt like a fish pulled out of the sea.

“That’s something you have to see for yourself, isn’t it…” he mumbled with a cigarette in between his lips.

“But I’m asking you, Hatano.”

He took a drag, slowly exhaled. One might get the impression that he was purposefully ignoring Jitsui (which he was), but he eventually spoke.

“It doesn’t matter. Reality is always being tempered with anyway, solitude or not.”

He had leaned in until he could almost taste Jitsui’s thoughts, a lazy, apathetic grin and a sweet yet off-putting smile faced each other. Jitsui had seemed so at ease under his gaze, it was scary. So he let out breath, like a brat, until Jitsui became shrouded in smoke.

There was the sound of a million stars sifting through the sky. Something began to unravel inside him, like the opening of an endless void. A part of him had ceased to exist, escaping his mind like a clever, stealthy cat. The kind of pain that fell upon him was grand and weightless and hollow, just like the sky. It was an emptiness that needed to be fulfilled no matter what, blooming with rose-toned visions.

 

 

The feeling was something he couldn’t put a finger on, being picked apart by Jitsui like an open book, page by page. The more he closed himself off, the easier it was to see through him. While Jitsui’s blunt, innocent act had made him impossible to figure out - for any ordinary person, that was.

“I was kind of lying about owning a cat before,” he’d admit it the same way he talked about the weather.

“I know.” Hatano always knew. “Why?”

“Why…” He lit a cigarette. For a brief moment, there was a flame the size of kidney bean. “For the fun of being someone else, y’know.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, to live in this kind of place means you’re always trying to be some type of person. Or arrive at some kind of truth, a universal truth that transcends everything else. This is really what we want, deep down - a sense of closure, correct?”

“More or less,” he said.

“Of course…you never get to become the person you want to be, or discover any kind of truth, but something drives you onwards anyway. That’s what I mean…who do I want to be? What kind of truth am I looking for? Asking those questions is completely pointless, but I wonder anyway…what kind of person does Hatano want to be?”

No one had ever asked him a question like that before, or at least he couldn’t remember it.

“What are you, my shrink?”

“So then, is Hatano looking for something meaningful in his life?”

“Huh?” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “I can’t care less about anything like that.”

A gentle breeze then panned across the room, he wondered if summer was ever going to end. Even though a horribly long time had slipped by, the air around him had remained warm and humid, as though drowning under the sun.

The neon sign across from the window was looking run-down, only parts of it glowed. The rest remained devoid of light, empty as a skeleton.

“The cat I had in mind would watch me eat,” Jitsui spoke again. “He’d be into grilled mackerels, I guess, and I’d always think that he was the cutest thing to exist. But these days I’m thinking you’re even cuter.”

Rendered somewhat speechless, the heat growing inside Hatano was becoming evident on his cheeks. His gaze had turned into a full-fledged glare.

When Jitsui was nowhere to be seen, his absence had left a light, yet palpable sense of emptiness, just as though a feather had drifted away. His presence was only a thousand times more menacing.

“Don’t take it the wrong way, Hatano. Being cute can take you places,” Jitsui continued, smiling.

“Of course you’d know _,_ ” he said, half-heartedly frowning at Jitsui, the corner of his lips rose uncontrollably.

 

 

Holding the wet umbrella in one hand, Hatano unlocked the door with the other, making an anticlimactic entrance just as the clock ticked past nine. “I’m home,” he murmured quietly, took off his shoes. The living room was empty, although a lamp by the corner was dimly lit. Not bothering to check if there was light in Jitsui’s room, he headed towards the balcony, slid open the dirty glass doors and stepped out.

The balcony was surrounded by Jitsui’s potted plants, whether on the ground or hanging from above, like lanterns lining the streets at night. Hatano frowned at the sight, _there’s barely any space left_ , he thought. He opened up the umbrella, stuck it in between two plants and left it there to dry. Even now, the faint mist of a drizzle could be felt against his skin. Resting an arm on the railing, he lit a damp cigarette – the last one in the pack, and smoked it gloomily. _This tastes even worse than usual…_

Not as though he expected any better.

You can’t see the moon from the balcony on the fifth floor of an ordinary apartment block. Looking out at this height, more or less, you see an array of other buildings protruding out of the earth, leaving only a narrow patch of sky behind telephone lines. A few stars glimmered faintly, like a music box playing against the white noise of the city.

“Welcome back.”

Without looking, he could already imagine Jitsui’s off-putting smile, his gentle features resting under the shadows of the night. _What’s it to you?_ Hatano wondered, staying silent as Jitsui came and stood beside him. Something heavy began to manifest between them, like a balloon waiting to burst.

“You think it’s stopping anytime soon?”

The scent of dirt permeated in the air, the streets beneath them bathed under a lavender haze. Every surface of the city was beaded in raindrops, washed anew and glowing with a new sense of clarity.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Hatano.

Upon hearing the response, Jitsui’s expression turned into a bitter smile. _Am I really that much of a pain to talk to?_

“But…” he spoke again, as though reading Jitsui’s mind. “It does rain a lot here,” he said, and reached out an arm towards the other man, holding the cigarette he had been smoking. Jitsui looked down at it, then back up at him, Hatano’s expression was clouded by blue, loose smoke. Without a word, he took it, stuck it between his lips and took a drag.

The cigarette tasted as though it had been rotting in the gutters, Jitsui grimaced for brief moment. _What a troublesome kid,_ he thought, calmly hiding his distaste. Still, if damp cigarettes were the sort of thing Hatano was into, he was willing to give it a try.

“You like it?” he asked, after letting out a puff. He passed the cigarette back.

“I’m not crazy about it,” Hatano said. “Is it like this where you used to live?” He spoke in his usual breathy, low voice, each syllable smoothly slipped off his tongue with ease.

“Not really,” said Jitsui. “It was so dry they almost announced a drought. There was barely any rain, nothing like this, anyway…can you believe such a place exists just a train ride away?”

“Hardly.”

“Have you been to the sea?”

“The sea? Yeah…”

“Is that so…”

“You haven’t?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jitsui shaking his head.

“It was all I could think about back then, the sea. But I guess that’s just part of growing up in a desert. Even when you told me your name that time…hey, Hatano, tell me something. What’s it like?”

“The sea, huh…” Hatano took one last drag of his cigarette and discarded it in an ashtray, seemingly in contemplation. He couldn’t imagine a life without the sea. “I grew up on an island,” he spoke. “A tiny island surrounded by other tiny islands, like a cluster of dots on a map. There were no cars. To buy something, say, milk, you had to row your way across to another island. Time passes slow as hell, but you can always look at the horizon. That’s what it’s like, I guess.”

“Time passes slow as hell?”

“Uh-huh.”

The image of Hatano smoking on a wooden boat floating on calm waters, glancing at the horizon with an air of indifference had manifested itself in Jitsui’s mind, time slipping by as though he was walking past a never-ending white wall.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jitsui said.

“I guess not.” He turned, half-heartedly staring at Jitsui’s profile. A sense of helplessness dawned upon him as the rain beat and soaked into his fingers.

 

 

Sitting together on the train, Hatano tried not to look sideways. Jitsui’s effortlessly powerful presence had stirred beside him. Their shoulders touched occasionally, as if their bodies were magnetised to each other. The scenery behind the glass blurred into an ever-changing gradient of colours, like a photo of a cat caught in the midst of running. The train treaded onwards, accelerated as though it was never stopping, incapable of reversing its own direction.

His gaze eventually landed on Jitsui, then downwards, the paperback in his hands. _It’s not gonna stop_ , he realised. _Knowing it’ll happen sooner or later, shouldn’t I just get to it now?_

“What’re you thinking about?”

The sun was setting, it had sunk beneath the horizon within the span of three songs, a pink glimmer remained on the trembling waters. A ship sailed off in the distance, he could see it from the jetty. Jitsui was watching the waves come and go. The sky had been clear that night, a sea of blue tinted with the warmth of the sinking sun. It was true, time passed slow as hell but the horizon was always there.

Hatano looked at him with a frown, _is he expecting me to tell the truth?_ _Who the hell asks questions like that…?_ In an odd way, Jitsui had always been blunt _\- bluntly lying to my face, asking to sleep together, saying innocent things with that off-putting smile of his…_

“You,” Hatano finally said, a lazy smile crept upon his lips. _It doesn’t matter what I think, it doesn’t matter if I tell the truth or not._

“Good,” Jitsui said. “I think about you a lot too.”

“Is that so,” he responded with mild interest. The air felt heavy and warm, it was like breathing through cotton. Occasionally a clean breeze swept past them.

“Say, the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” Jitsui was still watching the sea. In fact, Hatano was positive that he hadn’t taken a single look at the moon tonight, not even once.

Not knowing what to say, Hatano turned around, leaned back on the handrails. The pale moon had been watching them in her crescent form.

“You like me, huh.”

“I like you.”

“…And what do you expect me to do about that?” he asked.

No one said anything for a while.

“Give me a light.” Jitsui turned to him, he was mumbling with a cigarette in his mouth. “My lighter died.”

“That’s too bad.” Hatano searched his pockets, fished out a lighter.

The sky had turned darker, to the colour of a switched-off television screen. Jitsui’s face was illuminated by the soft glow of distant streetlights. The sound of the waves gently crashing onto the shore surrounded them, the coastline was as empty as a desert. In one smooth move, he took away Jitsui’s cigarette, held his chin and kissed him. It was the most ordinary kiss one could orchestrate. He even pulled away when Jitsui was parting his lips, like a brat, although Jitsui had caught him just in time, soon their tongues slid across each other like snakes. There was a vacuum inside him that only Jitsui could fill, that was for sure.

It probably lasted for a minute - a slow minute by the horizon, his mouth felt wet and warm afterwards. Without delay, he put the cigarette in between his lips, lit it and took it and shoved it into Jitsui’s mouth, his warm breath melting onto Hatano’s fingertips.

He leaned back again, glanced at the moon. Jitsui was watching the sea. Things were turning around, back to the normal state, the train had picked up its speed and treaded onwards.

“I was kind of hoping for a real build-up before that, y’know,” Jitsui said as though he was talking to himself, his words drifting into the breeze.

“…I didn’t want your mouth full of tobacco stench.” _Not for the first time, at least._

Jitsui chuckled. “That’s rich coming from you.”

Hatano ignored him and lit his own cigarette. It wasn’t damp this time, so he savoured the taste.

The vapours in the air clouded his sight, a large, flat shadow breathed upon the sea, the grey sand. He couldn’t make sense of anything. If he didn’t get to feel Jitsui again, he might go crazy. The feeling amounted to something of that calibre. A pot of water boiling to the brim, all you had to do was open the lid, then the foam and bubbles dwindled like waves sliding off the sand.

As he was going crazy, the moon looked down at him, smiling.

 

 

He began to realise that when the moon smiled, it was equally as beautiful and off-putting as Jitsui’s own. After they had sex, Jitsui had been blushing, lying next to him like a doll. _What’s with that face…_ Hatano had wondered. He didn’t know if having sex was going to change anything, he was only curious. The wind gently crashing against two naked bodies, the rawness of the sounds coming out of Jitsui’s mouth, the beads of sweat on his forehead as he became undone in bursts of pain and bliss, it was the look of absolute desperation that settled on his face.

“First time in a while?” Hatano asked, although he didn’t expect an answer.

“What do you mean?” Jitsui spoke softly.

“I mean…being fucked. No one has fucked you like this in a long time.”

“Normally…our positions would’ve been swapped. But I figured since it’s you, I’m fine with anything you want to do to me. Is it wrong to think like that?”

Hatano let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Reaching for the nightstand, he took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

“That’s just your way of avoiding conversation, isn’t it?”

“More or less,” he said.

It was true. Hatano picked up smoking as a way of avoiding unnecessary chatter. He held no interest or fixation on tobacco, but having a cigarette eased things out in many ways. He could speak or stay silent whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and it wasn’t going to be a problem.

“Cut it out, will you?” said Jitsui, he was clearly amused by something. Hatano blew out a puff of smoke towards him, he fanned the smoke away with his hand. “Hey, can you hear it?” he asked.

“The rain, huh.”

Jitsui sat up and snatched Hatano’s cigarette, took a puff for himself.

“Don’t you feel lonely, smoking like this?”

“I don’t feel anything,” said Hatano. “I’m just bored…hey, you wanna fuck me, don’t you? Do you feel up to it now?” was his way of avoiding this conversation.

“Okay,” said Jitsui. “Just give me a minute.”

 

 

Water flowed all over Hatano’s body, it spread across his arm like tree branches. Under the light, it looked like his skin was covered in thin shards of glass. He could barely see his reflection in the shower, he felt himself fading, evaporating like steam, rushing out through the cracks of the door.

The sensation of Jitsui inside him glazed all over his mind, Jitsui had been submerged inside him – again, again, again, like a dream that haunted him to no end, and his touch remained on him like rain soaking into his skin. There he was swallowed whole in the midst of the sea, under the moonlight, his insides sucked clean and devoid of substance.

_I can’t get it out of my head…_

He had been thinking about it all this time, until Alan pointed out the jacket he was wearing. It was a few sizes too big.

“Huh?” He looked down. “Oh, this was yours, right.” He promptly shrugged it off.

“Don’t worry, you can keep it. Since you like it so much.” Alan was smiling, his smiles were always pleasant. Hatano suddenly couldn’t remember why they had to break up.

“Whatever.” He looked away, the glass beside him was beaded with raindrops, illuminated by streetlights and passing cars. The waiter soon returned with their coffee, two gentle clinks on the table. He ripped open one packet of sugar after another, poured it into his cup on a whim.

“I see…today is full of sugar,” Alan commented. “I’ve known you for so many years, and yet I still can’t tell when you want to add sugar or have it black.”

“Me neither.” _But what’s the fun in knowing something like that?_ he thought to himself. Then he remembered. _I’m bored, and soon you’ll be too. We’ll ruin each other, that’s why we need to separate right now, got it?_ he had said those very words to Alan just a year ago.

“What’s with that pensive look on your face, Hatano?”

“I don’t look pensive,” he said defensively. “Well, go on then.”

“I thought you weren’t listening.”

“Your parents approved or not?”

“Oh, I suppose they did. I received their letter yesterday, they said Marie was beautiful - in that photo, and that I should stay here and treat her well. Now I owe her one for pretending to be my girlfriend…” He chuckled to himself. “It’s strange, I can’t help but feel that all the things I’ve ever longed for are right here. Is it the place or just my mood that’s making me feel this way?”

Hatano smiled, it was a real, genuine smile that brought even more light on his youthfulness. Deep down, he was probably relieved. He had never went out of his way to make friends, if anything, he probably pissed off a lot of the others with his indifferent attitude. In fact, his indifference went so far that various details, whether minor or useful, regularly slipped his mind. One could wager that someday he might wake up with no memory of his own name. It was under these conditions that Alan and Marie still managed to become the two people who came to mind when the word “friend” was mentioned.

“You should probably remember it,” he said.

“Remember this feeling?”

“Yeah. Write it down and put it on a fridge if you can.”

“Any fridge?”

“Any kind you want.”

Beneath the background noise, the quiet chatter, there was the sound of sand being sifted, granules dropped onto a hard, smooth surface. The world had turned on itself, like flipping an hourglass. It was no longer what it had been, despite things looking the same on the surface. Just as though his life had been frozen and reheated during that narrow slit of time, warmth rushed into his senses and flowed through his blood.

As he closed his eyes and fell asleep that night, the star had melted into the millions of other stars under his eyelids, like an opaque river flowing with the night sky. His mind only sunk deeper into a place devoid of light, the rain beat against his eardrums like thin needles falling onto a balloon.

 

 

Lying on the sofa, Hatano had completely dozed off, bathing under a soft light. His head sloppily leaned to one side, the cigarette in his mouth was on the verge of falling.

The hues of the sunset were projected onto the wall. Light intertwined with shadow, rippling like waves. In the first few seconds of awakening, everything looked hazy, unfocused. Jitsui had been watching the fish bowl, three goldfish aimlessly skirted around the glass.

“Aren’t they better viewed from the top?” Hatano mumbled sleepily, clumsily got up. The slight heat of the cloudy afternoon washed over him.

“Oh?”

The shadow of his figure walking across the room could be seen on the wall. They both stood up and looked down at the bowl. The fish swam as usual, their tails were like loose pieces of silk. The water glistened as the sunlight hit it.

“Ah,” Hatano let out a sigh of annoyance, he was bored already. He turned and looked at the other man. Jitsui’s face was split diagonally into half light, half shadows. _It hasn’t rained for a while…_ the thought came across him. _My cigarette is gone too._

A mild breeze fluttered through the window, there was a gentle warmth between the two bodies that lingered in space, hair strands swayed like palm trees. He thought of the place without rain, far from the sea. The dry, blazing sun cutting into his sight like some unescapable demon. A horizon that was nowhere to be seen, overridden with skyscrapers and hills and suburban houses. The clear night sky where the star on the east side of the moon shined lustrously…that was the kind of place Jitsui lived in, where time had passed in a continuous, circular motion, it was hard to tell if anything had happened at all.

He reached out and held him in a half-embrace, tracing Jitsui’s lips with a blank expression.  

“They used to put goldfish in tubs and basins,” said Jitsui. “There was no way to watch them from the side like we do now, so maybe you had a point.”

There was no response, their opened mouths simply caught each other, Jitsui’s lips were wet and soft, dizzyingly so. A soft film of light enveloped their bodies, two shadows became one and melted down the wall.

Jitsui had been drifting and paling like a loose balloon, a leaf in the wind, losing colour under the afternoon light, Hatano instinctively took hold of him, their mouths fitted like lock and key.

“You smoked a different brand today,” said Hatano, the feeling boiling inside him was something he couldn’t put into words, or rather, he was afraid to.

Under his indifferent gaze, Jitsui felt like a mosquito trapped in an upside-down glass. He smiled back, the light of the sunset reflected in his eyes. If only he could unravel every word that lay buried inside Hatano, every thought that breathed in his mind…the truth felt close yet unattainable, like an island in the distance of the sea.

 

The wooden boat lay on the river, drifting up and down like a bee hovering over a flower. Dense forests surrounded both sides of the passage, the sky was a narrow tube of morning light. They rowed the boat with little effort – it was as though there was an underlying force beneath the river that carried them onwards, they were simply going through the motions.

“You know that place – where _time passes slow as hell_ , can you take me there?” Jitsui had asked him.

“Sure,” he had said without thinking. They ended up leaving in the spur of the moment, getting to here had been a huge hassle – there must have been a day of pure transport. How did Hatano leave it in the first place? How did he end up there?

“Are we going to your home today?” Jitsui asked.

He scoffed. “You wish,” he said dismissively. “We’re going to another motel, over there.” He gestured towards the horizon, where the river had opened up to the sea. It was shrouded in the morning mist, but there was probably another island in the distance.

The cat climbed gingerly onto his lap and curled into a ball – it hadn’t left them alone ever since arrival. Hatano looked down, than back at the sea. His gaze softened briefly, before turning empty as they drifted under the shadow of the forest.

When they were in the middle of the sea, they had stopped and let go of the oars. Hatano took a long, satisfying drag of the cigarette, he could feel Jitsui’s half-dried saliva on the rolling paper wetting his lips as he had put it in his mouth. Clouds of smoke manifested before the fog. He inhaled the cold air, then let out a long breath.

“Is this where you wanted to be?” He glanced at him. Jitsui had reached an arm out and was absent-mindedly tracing ripples in the water. From the sky, they probably looked like a leaf drifting in a boundless river.

“Hm,” said Jitsui.

“Hm?”

“Hm!” He sounded firmer this time.

“Well that makes one of us.” Hatano sounded relieved.

“What’s with that…”

Hatano clicked his tongue. “I hate it, y’know,” he said. “Don’t you feel helpless?”

Jitsui shook his head. 

Thinking he probably spoke too much, Hatano glanced at the other side of the sea, feeling helpless. He was nothing more than a lonely pebble, drowning under the ocean. Jitsui was some otherworldly thing that happened to pick him up. Everywhere in the folding waves, the clear sky, the morning mist lay the truth of which he so dreaded to face.

They arrived at what seemed to be the centre of the town. There were ships with vibrantly coloured sails and tourists who got off one after another, the smell of dried seaweed and tobacco permeated in the air like rain. 

But it never rained, and the sun didn’t set until well into the night. The sea’d lose its glimmer, become charred just as the sun burned the sky into a black abyss, the lights of the town began to waver and switch off one by one until only the moon smiled down at them. The strange star was still by the east of the moon, glowing like an unforgettable mole.

He had been silent all this time, holding his breath for no reason. Lying on the sand, the star stared back onto him with a new intensity. No one to call. No one to talk. He couldn’t part his lips. _Jitsu_ as in ‘truth’. _I_ as in ‘well’. I like you. What kind of person does Hatano want to be? Say, the moon is beautiful, isn’t it? I like you. Is Hatano looking for something meaningful in his life? I like you. I like you. I like you…

One pounding headache after another, he bit his lip in anticipation of pain. He couldn’t remember anything else. How long will it last? The cat walked over to him and took a sniff, then lay down between their heads. There were the sounds of waves washing over the shore, the faint whistle of a distant wind. He could fall asleep right here. Why did Jitsui want to lie down in the first place? To view the sky, of course, he reminded himself. Damn…the sky! The stars! The moon! Not even a cigarette could hide him from the truth. What a pain in the ass this was…

“Jitsui,” he spoke nonchalantly. “Did you fall in love?”

“Fall in love?” The man chuckled. “No, I fell into you.”

 _That’s not funny at all_ , Hatano almost laughed sarcastically, but let out a breath instead. “Truth is...I noticed a new star the day we met, and I haven’t been okay since.”

“Is that so? I don’t understand it too well myself…”

“Then…are we really going to be okay?”

“As long as the moon remains beautiful like this.”

“As long as the moon’s beautiful, huh,” he mused.

The sky was filling up with stars. He had lost his sight on the one that had been bothering him until now. Somehow, it was just like this…it was always Jitsui who made things disappear and slip his mind so easily.

 _How can I ever deny the moon of its beauty? How can I ever reject her light?_ The moon’s beauty would remain for as long as he could breathe, the passage of time would continue for as long as he could comprehend it, then…how did Jitsui’s presence become one such constant in his life? He imagined his honey-glazed smile, the ever-present light in his eyes, feeling helpless all over again.

Somewhere, the unmistakable tune of Casiopea’s ‘Take Me’ rang on… 

**Author's Note:**

> if theres anything to take from this it'd be there were some great albums from the 80s lol. example being casiopea's mint jams (1982), the first track from that was called 'take me' hehe i think it has a nice atmosphere so i imagined that playing in the background when they first met lol and it also helped me to imagine the setting-
> 
> also ..well it's not that important to this story but since i kept mentioning it.. i read natsume soseki used to translate 'i love you' from english to japanese as sth like "the moon is beautiful, isn't it?" as the eng i love you sounds too direct? i mean.. what a pretty way to express your love to one another !! kinda imagined jitsui the bookworm would do this, anyway...
> 
> thanks for reading!!! :')


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